September 2008 Archives

Those of you that have been playing World of Warcraft will probably shake their head in disbelief, those who don't play they game will certainly do so. I've been working on obtaining the Frostsaber mount, better known as "Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber".

This is the only epic mount in game that lets you ride at 100% with a 75 riding skill, but it takes ages to build up the reputation with the Wintersaber Trainers, at 850 rep for three quests.

I constantly meet level 70 players that fly through the quests as a knife through butter, but with my current level 62 rogue, it proves challenging at times. The meat for the Frostsaber Provisions quest have a very low drop rate, the furbolgs are being grinded down by every player around and the giants... we'll, they're giants and they hit like one :)

Maybe I should put this on hold for a while and work towards a PvP mount first, to increase my speed and bring down the time needed? But then I'd need to shell out the 600g for the higher level riding skill, which is something I was trying to avoid in the first place, lol. Choices, choices. Good thing I've got another week off - I may make it after all.

Thanks to some scheduling snafu - something that has never occurred before, really! - I had to work till 7AM instead of 6. When my site supervisor turned up and I pointed out that there was no team leader available for the early shift, the answer was "oh, but the client knows about it, and has agreed" to which I replied "very nice, but I have not nor did anyone tell or ask me anything upfront". I'm getting quite fed up with them just "assuming" opposed to asking/verifying.

Hence, my late arrival at home (07h45 instead of 06h30) due to the ever present traffic jams around this time of day. Off to bed now, so if you call and I don't pick up the phone immediately, I may still be asleep.

Thanks to everyone who has left a comment or inquired about my health. I'm feeling much better and doing quite well.

During my visit this morning, the doctor asked me whether I was running a fever, to which I replied negatively. I just checked it and it seems I am. Even though I should be staying up all night in preparation for tomorrow's night shift, I'm heading off to bed to rest after popping some of those pills I got.

I rarely visit a doctor - apart from the mandatory exam we have at work every 6 months - so when I do head over there you can be rather certain something is amiss. When I got home on Tuesday, I felt some pain in my groin and when I took a look it seemed irritated and swollen. Nothing too bad, a bit tender to the touch but not warm. I took a long bath and headed off to bed because I really needed the sleep.

I woke up on Wednesday and it was still irritated and swollen, however, work called so I bit my teeth and decided to head out for another early shift. Walking was becoming quite painful and simple touching the area resulted in quite some pain. Before I left for work, I put some anti inflammatory cream on it, in a "if it doesn't help, it doesn't make things worse either" kind of sense. I added some talc powder to keep the area dry and went to work.

When I got home, I grabbed an icepack to bring the swelling down and it seemed to help a bit, though the tenderness remained. Headed off to bed very early once again, and got up around 3 at night because my back was hurting. I checked and the area most tender to touch has turned blue or even black. Since things are definitely not improving, I'm visiting a doctor at 9 this morning to get a professional opinion and hopefully aid. Once we know what's wrong, we should be able to cure it I assume.

I'll be updating as more information becomes available, unless they rush me to the hospital and tear me apart for a complete overhaul, lol.

Update 10:20 : After spending 45 minutes in a waiting room, I finally got to see the doctor who listened to my description and then took me into the examination room where she told me to drop my pants. She quickly was able to diagnose it as an infected cyst and a slice and dice job accompanied with some (painful) pressure released a bunch of puss. After a bandage and a trip to the pharmacy I'm ready to tackle the coming days. Clean up but make sure no soap get's in the wound, apply cream and cover with gauze. Pop two pills two times a day to stop the infection from spreading and it should all be much better on Saturday. If not, I'll be back for a follow up visit.

Hope you weren't reading this while having dinner, lol!

The past couple of days, things have progressively gotten worse and no matter what some people try to change things around, I often feel like it's all just a waste of time. Once the ship starts sinking, the rats leave, which really makes one wonder who's the smart one? The furry little critters that try to swim to shore, or the captain who's trying to keep the ship afloat, only to be discarded when a new and shiny vessel approaches the harbor.

When people is what you need to get things done, it would be smart to reward them even if just with a kind word or comment. We never ever see our employer or their representatives unless it is to get our balls busted about things that were out of our hands to begin with. It's like getting the order to cut a piece of metal into smaller chunks and receiving a toothpick to work with. A blunt toothpick of course.

It makes me very tired and irritated at times. On the 16th I've got a shot at something new, though realistically speaking, I don't stand a chance if... I'm not going there.

I was looking at some back end data and found out that lately there's been some fishy searching going on. If anyone has a clue what the idea behind this is, or recognizes the IP's listed, by all means, leave me a comment!

Search: query for 'marketing' - 83.29.184.204 - 41 minutes ago
Search: query for ' front 242' - 79.138.242.177 - 1 hour ago
Search: query for 'domains' - 83.29.184.204 - 6 hours ago
Search: query for 'books' - 83.29.157.104 - 12 hours ago
Search: query for 'legal' - 83.29.157.104 - 18 hours ago
Search: query for 'privacy' - 83.29.181.192 - 20 hours ago
Search: query for 'traffic' - 195.46.41.144 - 23 hours ago
Search: query for 'shopping' - 195.46.41.10 - 1 day ago
Search: query for 'linux' - 195.46.41.235 - 1 day ago
Search: query for 'blog' - 83.29.184.211 - 1 day ago
Search: query for 'friends' - 83.29.184.239 - 1 day ago
Search: query for 'legal' - 83.29.184.211 - 2 days ago
Search: query for 'world' - 78.46.86.18 - 2 days ago
Search: query for 'politics' - 78.46.86.18 - 2 days ago
Search: query for 'life' - 78.46.86.18 - 2 days ago

I'm not so much surprised by the actual searches and terms, because most of those are valid tags or categories on the blog. What is more striking is the fact that there are three searches in a short period of time, then it stops and it starts again later. Some IP's return quite a few times too. I've ran some through a series of tools and one IP address is assigned to a German provider, one is coming from Sweden but - and here it becomes interesting - 5 IP addresses are linked to ISP Neostrada Plus (Krakow Poland) with another one coming from the Lerkins Group, also based in Krakow, Poland.

It would be most safe to disregard the Swedish search entry, as it is not a category or regular tag search, nor does it fit the pattern the other searches share. I just included it to be as complete as possible.

The sudden attention from Poland for this blog seems a little odd, wouldn't you say? I looked around on the Lerkins Group site and apparently they provide Security Audit and Consultancy services. Is someone profiling me? Are they just interested in what I have to write here? Is a Lerkins admin catching up on all my posts and once work is done, does some more checking from home? Who knows...

I'm gonna take a look in some other log files to dig a bit deeper. Should I find anything out of the ordinary, I'll report back.

Note : while checking the last 300 lines in the log file, I noticed some IP addresses that belong to comment spammers, so those are now banned.

Sometimes you just need to cut away from everything and focus on the issues at hand, and that is exactly what I did this weekend. After working two series of night shifts in a row, I was a mess, my place was a mess and I was suffering from headaches frequently, my nose was clogged up, yet I wasn't really ill. I got home from work on Friday morning and so far I directed all my remaining energy at sleeping, cleaning up the place and having a decent meal.

I probably sounds bizarre to some as sleep and good food are all to often a given for most, but then again there are those times you just don't have or make the time to do either. All of that has been rectified this weekend. I feel better, had plenty of sleep and am back to a more or less "normal" schedule, the place looks less like a war zone - still have some things to do though - and I'm ready for a new week.

I just got home from a quick trip to Gamemania to reserve my copy of World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King because it would be quite naive to think that Blizzard can cope with the high demand when the expansion set finally is released. WotLK has been delayed several times already and according to Davina - still as hot as the last time I wrote about her - it'll be pushed to December rather than November as announced on the gamemania site. If push comes to shove it may very well be 2009 before the world actually gets to play.

Anyway, I'm off to bed, in the early evening off to feed a pair of hungry cats and tonight work calls.

* The number of spam comments blocked on this blog so far. One would assume spammers would get the point, wouldn't you? Their crap never makes it onto this blog, give up already :)